The purpose of the study was to determine how the Business Research program at Biola University can meet the needs of small business. The Business Research program originated at Biola University was a capstone course for all business seniors in which student consulting teams used previous classroom and book knowledge to analyze and make recommendations to small business firms selected by the faculty.An eighty-one item survey was administered by mail to forty-seven business firms which had participated in the business research course at any time during its seven year history. Responses from the thirty-eight firm administrators who returned the completed survey were analyzed with frequency distributions, measures of central tendency, Chi-square, Kendall's tau, a contingency table, and a summary of narrative statements.Conclusions(1) While Business Research students appear to benefit more from working with a corporation which contains a well developed management team, the client does not find student recommendations to be as valuable as a smaller, less sophisticated firm might.(2) Special emphasis should be placed on market research, relating to others, and ethical and moral values because clients appeared to value these skills and related them directly to their evaluation of the overall project.(3) As the program became more refined over time, businesses perceived faculty as more aware of business problems and found students better able to express themselves on paper.(4) Evaluation of teaching techniques in sales promotion, inventory control, accounts receivable and payable, computer usage, and information on competitors should be considered since clients tended to find student performance in these areas less than satisfactory.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Sociology, June 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.